will P35 + ICH7R be a good combination?

kenofstephen · 2 Jan 2008 at 10:10

Native IDE;
RAID (4 HDDs);
similar performance.

nightmare99 · 2 Jan 2008 at 10:22

I wasent aware this combination was possible?
I thought the only 3 series chipsets to be compatible with ICH7/R was P31&G31.

kenofstephen · 2 Jan 2008 at 10:40

nightmare99 said:
I wasent aware this combination was possible?
I thought the only 3 series chipsets to be compatible with ICH7/R was P31&G31.

It is possible.

WJA96 · 2 Jan 2008 at 10:43

It's possible - but I don't think you can call it P35 anymore, no?

kenofstephen · 2 Jan 2008 at 10:49

WJA96 said:
It's possible - but I don't think you can call it P35 anymore, no?

why? NB function is still the same, SB is responsible for USB, SATA, IDE...

kenofstephen · 2 Jan 2008 at 10:50

As ICH7R is with native IDE, it will also solve those 3rd parties' IDE chip compatibility issue.

nightmare99 · 2 Jan 2008 at 10:53

Did you check out the IP35 Pro thread there are some good views in there?

WJA96 · 2 Jan 2008 at 12:17

kenofstephen said:
why? NB function is still the same, SB is responsible for USB, SATA, IDE...

P31 is the P35 Northbridge with the ICH8 or ICH8R controller, so I'm pretty sure Intel wouldn't be overly pleased if you called the P35/ICH7R combination a P35 board. It makes no difference though what you call it, so long as it works.

I think you'd get a poor reaction to going back 2 generations of chipset from enthusiast users though. Is there a problem with the ICH9R + JMicron route that the other manufacturers have taken?

BUFF · 2 Jan 2008 at 19:17

abit's IP35V apparently is a P35 nb with an ICH7 sb.
They do have an IP31 in the Q1 2008 catalogue as well so I guess that it's true & not marketing trying to pass off a P31 chipset mobo under the halo of the IP35 series.

Rroff · 2 Jan 2008 at 21:02

Only thing I will say... the best RAID performance I've ever got was with the DFI Infinity 975X boards which I think I'm right in saying used ICH7R. I've since used 3 different 680i boards and a couple of P35 boards with ICH9R and while RAID performance is good, its not a shade on the old 975X so if ICH7R gives really good RAID performance I don't see a problem personally with using it.

WJA96 · 2 Jan 2008 at 21:22

Rroff said:
Only thing I will say... the best RAID performance I've ever got was with the DFI Infinity 975X boards which I think I'm right in saying used ICH7R. I've since used 3 different 680i boards and a couple of P35 boards with ICH9R and while RAID performance is good, its not a shade on the old 975X so if ICH7R gives really good RAID performance I don't see a problem personally with using it.

Yes, but that was with PATA drives, no? ICH7R doesn't support fast SATA does it? This seems a fairly desperate chipset choice for what can only be cost-saving reasons.

But it will have a black PCB and a muted colour scheme, so that's OK.

Rroff · 2 Jan 2008 at 21:29

That was with SATA, IIRC the board didn't support SATA2 GEN2 w/ NCQ only GEN1 but to be honest I'm using the same 4 discs (which are all fully SATA2 w/ NCQ featured) on the gigabyte P35 DS3R and still seeing lower performance by quite a margin than on the 975X and I have SATA2 enabled on the board and the gen1/2 jumper removed from the HDDs. The performance is great don't get me wrong, but the burst speeds are 100MB/s slower than I got on the 975X and the average speeds around 15MB/s slower, with only 2 discs the performance difference isn't so distinct but its still slower.

It is the one thing that does bug me a little I've used quite a few different boards since and never got my original raid performance back even on the high end 680i boards.

BUFF · 2 Jan 2008 at 21:30

WJA96 said:
Yes, but that was with PATA drives, no? ICH7R doesn't support fast SATA does it?

I believe that it does support SATA300.

No doubt it's done to shave costs though.

WJA96 · 2 Jan 2008 at 21:36

BUFF said:
I believe that it does support SATA300.

Really? Given how old that chipset is, I'd be really surprised, but you never know what alterations can be made.

WJA96 · 2 Jan 2008 at 21:37

Rroff said:
The performance is great don't get me wrong, but the burst speeds are 100MB/s slower than I got on the 975X

What burst speeds were you getting on the 975X?

BUFF · 2 Jan 2008 at 21:38

WJA96 said:
Really? Given how old that chipset is, I'd be really surprised, but you never know what alterations can be made.

http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/datashts/307013.htm

Table 5-43 on P191.

Rroff · 2 Jan 2008 at 21:41

BUFF said:
I believe that it does support SATA300.

No doubt it's done to shave costs though.

I think its capable of it, as the new revision 975X boards show SATA 3gb in the specification.

EDIT: I take what I said in the previous post back - I just found this sticker on my 975X board:

http://aten-hosted.com/images/975x.jpg

SATA2 was supported just no NCQ (which slows down RAID benchmarks anyhow)

WJA96 · 2 Jan 2008 at 21:51

OK. It'll be like the good old days. 2 PATA sockets and 4 SATA sockets and whatever is plugged in works.

WJA96 · 2 Jan 2008 at 21:52

Rroff said:
I think its capable of it, as the new revision 975X boards show SATA 3gb in the specification.

EDIT: I take what I said in the previous post back - I just found this sticker on my 975X board:

http://aten-hosted.com/images/975x.jpg

SATA2 was supported just no NCQ (which slows down RAID benchmarks anyhow)

Well, according to the document BUFF unearthed it supports NCQ now.

Rroff · 2 Jan 2008 at 22:02

Yeah looks like it got updated at some point, I'm pretty sure the original board I bought had only SATA150... thats one of the boxes (I've owned 3 of them total) so one of the newer ones must have been a newer revision.